The first research excellence award for the academic year 2020-2021 for the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Western Macedonia was awarded to Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis, director of the ITHACA Lab, and Ph.D. candidate Dimitrios Pliatsios, for their publication “A Survey on SCADA Systems: Secure Protocols, Incidents, Threats and Tactics”. Their research work was published in the IEEE Communication Surveys & Tutorials journal, which publishes tutorials and surveys covering all aspects of telecommunications and features an impact factor of 25.249.

In “A Survey on SCADA Systems: Secure Protocols, Incidents, Threats and Tactics”, an overview of SCADA architectures and industrial communication protocols is provided, along with a presentation of SCADA security objectives, vulnerabilities, and high-impact cybersecurity incidents against critical infrastructures. Additionally, an extensive review of the security methods and tactics aiming to secure SCADA systems is carried out. Finally, the state-of-art regarding SCADA cybersecurity, as well as the future research trends, are analyzed.